Originally Posted by
GGLwannabe
I still can't find any paid F class availability HKG-TPE, HKG-SIN, HKG-BKK for dates beyond March 24th. It was my understanding that flights up to the end of April would normally be finalised by the end of the preceding October. Some of the multiple daily flights to Taipei in April are still on 777s, but no F seats are bookable. Does anyone have any further information on this?
I'll put this here for you and others as well.
A.) If you're looking for award tickets skip this post.
B.) If you're spending cash for F intra-Asia, then the options / situation is very simple.
To SIN: you pay cash on SQ. You don't pay for F on CX to SIN if you want F because even if they sell it to you, you can't count on it. This is my biggest annoyance with CX, holds true for J hard product also. AFAIK, nobody in HK who wants to fly F to SIN goes CX. In my situation occasionally we accompany clients or other folks who "require" F to SIN and 100% of the time we buy SQ. Our office staff know it and the staff of our clients seem to know it too. So I don't think this is a big mystery regardless of what the CX website says or doesn't say. SQ has three guaranteed flights with First (well technically 2 First and 1 Suites) and that's the way you do it. The cost runs about $3k USD for a round-trip to SIN in F.
For SIN, fyu this same logic also holds true if you want guaranteed long-haul J class hard product to SIN: you fly SQ. You can guarantee longhaul J on 4x daily flights (the 3 ones with F, + a 1x daily A350 service).
To BKK: You're SOL. Emirates used to fly F to BKK but not anymore.
To TPE: You're SOL.
The bummer with BKK and TPE if you really want a nice hard product is you can't guarantee, on any of the carriers, your precise product. But c'est la vie and at least for the longest of those three (SIN) you can. But you gotta fly SQ.
So I guess my big point is CX's equipment swaps and scheduling swaps intra-Asia mean you gotta go other carriers to guarantee your hard product.